Macnimsey's Show

There is still no formally united Army-Navy command in the Pacific. The New York Herald Tribune's Correspondent Joseph Driscoll summed up the operation: " 'Macnimsey'* is running this show."

General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey met in Australia three months ago, probably agreed then on the part each was to play. According to dispatches from General MacArthur's headquarters, he planned the operation in detail, without abolishing the arbitrary geographical line between Admiral Halsey's area, which stops just west of Guadalcanal, and General MacArthur's, which begins there. All the objectives lay in the MacArthur area; direction, therefore, fell to him. Admiral Halsey was still responsible to Admiral Nimitz and to the Navy Department in Washington. So, presumably, were the naval units which worked with Lieut. General Walter Krueger in the New Guinea landings.

Correspondents at the various headquarters tended to judge these arrangements by the ragged fashion in which news was released. Those with Admiral Halsey complained that both the Navy Department and MacArthur's headquarters were hogging the releases. From MacArthur's headquarters the New York Daily News's shrewd Jack Turcott cabled that the offensive "apparently has revealed a wider differentiation than ever."

Others judged the value of the arrangements by the actual results in the field. On the evidence available to outsiders last week, Admiral-General Macnimsey was doing pretty well.

* "An abbreviation for General Douglas MacArthur, Allied Commander in Chief in the Southwest Pacific; Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; and Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., Commander in the South Pacific."

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